The Tunnel

by Carl-Johan Vallgren

  The line crackled; the boy seemed to have put down the phone. Katz heard his voice from a distance.

  “I have to go,” he said. “Dad came in the door and I’m not supposed to—”

  The call ended in the middle of his sentence.

  Katz put down the phone and stared at the last page of the address book. The boy’s bright, childish voice was still echoing through his head.

  When he called again a minute later, he heard a recorded voice telling him that the number was temporarily unavailable.

  It was 10 p.m. and the person Katz was waiting for didn’t seem to have any intention of showing up. Katz could sympathize. It had started to rain, a gentle, cold drizzle.

  He left the spot where he’d been standing and walked over to the car. He fumbled underneath the rim until he found the key. He opened the driver-side door and peered in. There was a car battery on the floor, and it was connected to a light in the glovebox. A sleeping bag was unrolled across the back seat. There were a few letters from the Social Insurance Agency, addressed to a certain John Sjöholm at a P.O. box in the city.

  Boxes of prescription drugs were sticking out of the side pocket of the door: Subutex, prescribed out of a clinic in Solna. Protease inhibitors. Fusion and enzyme inhibitors. The guy was HIV positive.

  A dog-eared porn magazine lay on the passenger seat, open at the centerfold. The headline was in German: Geile ficken im Klassenzimmer. Katz saw nude images of the man, taken a few years earlier, when he was in better shape. His cock was erect. He was trying to look tough as he stared into the camera, but he didn’t succeed. He was getting a blow job from Jenny, who was dressed as a little girl.

  Katz put down the magazine and looked in the glovebox. Two syringes wrapped in a handkerchief. An electronic picklock and a crowbar.

  He was startled by footsteps. A flashlight lit up the factory wall in the distance. Katz locked the car door and put back the key.

  Ten minutes later, when the man stepped out of the car, Katz was behind him and slightly off to the side, in the dark. The rain had stopped. The lights of the city were reflected against the thick clouds. He could hear rustling from a rubbish heap further off—rats, maybe.

  Katz took two steps forward and the man didn’t have time to react before he hit him in the chest with the crowbar. The man collapsed before him with a prolonged groan.

  Katz followed him down to the ground, pressing the shaft of the crowbar to his neck, just under his larynx. He felt like he was looking at an enlargement of the spots on the man’s face: the eruptions were yellow, filled with fluid. The man clawed at the air with his fingers, trying to scream, but all he could produce was a rattle.

  A truck engine started somewhere nearby. Its headlights lit up the factory wall before it backed out and drove off through the industrial area. The man was still struggling, trying to tear at Katz’s hair. Katz headbutted him in the face.

  Katz removed the crowbar from the man’s throat just one second before he would have slipped into unconsciousness and stood up, pressing his foot against the man’s cheek. The man gave a violent cough; snot and blood ran from his nose.

  “Don’t do it,” he said. “For God’s sake, don’t kill me . . .”

  “Why were you following me?”

  The man seemed to be processing the information, trying to nod as if he finally understood what was going on.

  “Leona asked me to.”

  “Who?”

  “The girl from Blue Dreams. She asked me to find out who you are . . .” His voice was slowly returning. He remained on his back, grimacing with pain. “You know, because you went there and asked a bunch of questions.”

  A violent demon was running riot inside of Katz. He didn’t trust it; didn’t trust himself.

  “What did you learn about me?”

  “Nothing. I lost you. I don’t even know your name.”

  The man was peering nervously at a point just behind him. And then at the crowbar in Katz’s hand. He touched his nose cautiously and seemed surprised to see blood on his fingertips.

  “How do you know her . . . Leona?”

  “She pays me to work the glory holes. Most people know it’s a guy on the other side, but they pretend it’s not; they fantasize about a chick instead . . . they don’t care if their cocks happen to rub up against a little stubble.”

  “What about Jenny?”

  “The two of us worked there. But she quit.”

  Katz took a step back. The man crawled to his knees, massaging his chest and neck.

  “I want you to tell me what you know about Jenny.”

  They had known each other for a few years, the man explained. She was from Stockholm, but she had spent a couple of years living abroad. Her real name was Jennifer, but she went by all sorts of pseudonyms.

  “She claims it’s because her mum is looking for her, and she doesn’t want to be found. But that girl lies so much she believes herself.”

  “What’s her last name?”

  “Roslund. Why do you want to know?”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “It’s been a few months. I ran into her in town by chance. We got coffee, but she was stressed as shit and left after five minutes. She had clients waiting, she said.”

  “How can I get hold of her?”

  “No idea. I had her number in my old phone, but it got stolen.”

  Katz stared intently at him, unsure whether he was lying.

  “You did porn shoots together,” he said. “You have a magazine in the car.”

  “So what? I needed the money . . . Shit, I’m a whore anyway; what the fuck does it matter? I don’t even like it. Have to use pills to get it up.”

  The man looked at him with a mixture of shame and defiance.

  “Tell me more. About what happened the other day. When you were following me.”

  He had seen Katz for the first time when he was asking about Jenny at the shelter. He’d overheard the conversation Katz had had with the man on duty, Magnus, and had become curious; he’d followed him to the porn club and slipped into the background while he was talking to Leona.

  When Katz left, she’d asked him to follow him and find out who he was. He had lost sight of him. But a few days later, by chance, he saw him again at Central Station.

  “You met Leona here afterward,” Katz said. “I saw you. A guy in a BMW showed up—who was that?”

  “Her boyfriend. Wallin.”

  “What’s his first name?”

  “No idea. That’s just what people call him; I don’t know him.”

  “Did Jenny ever mention an address book to you?”

  “What the fuck kind of address book?”

  “For their drug deals, her and Ramón’s. Or about something called H.o.P.?”

  The guy was startled and gave him an odd look.

  “No . . . and you ask really fucking weird questions.”

  Katz realized that he was losing focus, almost as if he were falling inside himself. The craving was back, as inexplicable as the last time: a flicker of something like epilepsy. When he returned to his senses he saw that the guy was holding a knife in his hand. He was backing up and waving the blade at him.

  Not dangerous, Katz thought. He didn’t have it in him to kill anyone. So he let him go.

  Where had Ramón got the money to buy drugs? Somehow he had come into a great deal of it, likely by criminal means.

  A robbery?

  But Ramón wouldn’t make a good robber, Katz thought as he walked to the shelter on Flemingsgatan; he wasn’t aggressive enough, wasn’t ever wired enough.

  Horse junkies were seldom robbers; they preferred burglary. The crackheads were the ones who would take an ax into a jewelry shop and grab the daily cash and as many gems as they could carry.

  It didn’t add up. He was on the wrong track.

  He remembered how Ramón would make up lies about everything under the sun: about rich relatives who didn’t exist, drugs he claimed he could get, places
they could spend the night that turned out to be purely fantasy. Or how his mother had been forced to flee Chile for political reasons when in fact she had come to Sweden to work as a maid.

  The young guy with the hipster beard was standing in the door of the shelter, waving at an older drunk who was walking over from the park across the street.

  “A new volunteer, perhaps?” he said cheerfully as he noticed Katz. “All jokes aside, have you found the girl you were looking for?”

  He held the door for him.

  “Not yet,” Katz said. “Is Mona here?”

  “I let her in early this morning. The poor thing couldn’t get a bed at any of the night shelters. She slept outside. Check the laundry room.”

  “It’s him,” she said when she looked at the video he’d taken on his phone in Ulvsunda. He stopped the video when the man with the slicked-back hair entered the frame.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yep. Unless he has a doppelgänger. That’s the guy I saw in the gossip mag. The dude who arranges the perv get-togethers. The organizer.”

  “So, the same guy?”

  “Yes. Without a doubt. Peter. That’s what she called him. I just remembered.”

  “What about the other guy, in the hoodie. Do you know him?”

  “No.”

  “John Sjöholm. Red spots on his face. That doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  “Should it?”

  She snatched the five-hundred-kronor bill and made a kissy face.

  “Thanks, darling. What would I do without you?”

  Peter Wallin, Katz thought as she vanished into one of the dormitories. A name would lead somewhere.

  Maybe the numbers in Ramón’s address book didn’t belong to clients or dealers, as he’d first thought. Maybe they were johns in Wallin’s network. Men who gathered to degrade women.

  Blackmail. Was that how they’d got the seed money to buy a whole lot of heroin?

  PART 4

  Jorma was waiting at a Japanese lunch restaurant on Ulvsundavägen. The aroma of miso soup and fresh dumplings was making his mouth water. He hadn’t eaten anything substantial in days.

  He had spent his time finding a new hideout instead. In the end, an old friend had let him borrow a studio apartment in Högdalen, and had even arranged a car for him. Emir. He’d known him since his Hell’s Angels days. A dependable guy.

  He was starting to feel safer. He’d even toyed with the thought of heading out to Kransen to pick up some stuff. But it was still too soon.

  Leena ought to be feeling relieved by now. He’d texted her to say that he was out of town, and that she shouldn’t worry. He’d asked her to take some money out of the safe deposit box in Huddinge and keep it at home in case he needed it on short notice.

  He looked at the clock that hung above the sashimi counter. Hillerström didn’t seem to have any intention of showing up.

  He would give him another five minutes, ten at the most, before he drove out to the house. The guy was as good as dead already.

  The handler’s hands, he thought . . . He’d forgotten to ask Hillerström if there was anything special about the man’s hands. He couldn’t quite put his finger on the memory; he’d been in shock in the forest and the whole scene had been too chaotic.

  There were other things that bothered him, like the fact that Zoran had moved around, staying with different friends in the weeks leading up to the robbery. And the tone of his voice when he told Jorma about it in the car at the shopping center, as if the two things were connected.

  He looked at the clock. Ten minutes had passed. It was time for Hillerström to eat shit.

  He stopped the car in the same spot as he had four days earlier, but this time he walked right up to the house. The front door was unlocked. This ought to have raised his suspicions, he realized later. But it didn’t at the time. He was full of adrenaline; he would start by shooting the pig in the kneecaps. It was two in the afternoon. The man might have prepared himself for a visit and called in backup. His wife and kids might arrive home at any moment, but either way, Jorma didn’t give a rat’s ass.

  To his surprise, they were already there. They were sitting at a table in the room with the ugly contrast wallpaper, staring at him expressionlessly. Two girls, surprisingly like their father . . . and their mum was there, too.

  Their faces were red from crying. Vases of flowers, condolence cards attached, lined the bar counter.

  “Who are you looking for?”

  The woman had spoken to him, Hillerström’s wife.

  “I’m trying to get hold of . . .”

  That was as far as he got before he stopped. He suspected he knew what was going on.

  “Don’t you read the papers?” said the girl closest to him, in the same voice he’d heard a couple of days earlier when she returned home to get her schoolbook. “Dad has been murdered.”

  The office was nearly deserted. People had found excuses to go home early. The lights were on in Hoffman’s office. A few days ago, she definitely would have made sure he knew that she was there. But not this time. She snuck past his door as discreetly as she could.

  She took off her shoes as she entered her office, and she closed the door cautiously. She aired out her feet as she peered out the window at Kungsholm Church. The autumn leaves had started to fall on the cemetery surrounding it.

  A pile of folders she didn’t recognize lay on her desk. Other divisions of the Economic Crime Authority trying to saddle her with projects. She ought to have been on hand during the day, looking out for her own best interests. But she’d been anxious about events of the previous day and had chosen to work from home instead.

  As she sat down at her desk and turned on her computer she could hear Hoffman talking on the phone, his office door open. Something about the unacceptable flow rate in the petty-crime unit. His friendly but firm voice made people feel secure and motivated all at once. The man was popular, and not just with her. In under six months he had managed to raise morale throughout the whole department.

  She opened an email from her contact at the investigative unit; he had sent the survey results. According to the law governing electronic communication, an individual’s telephone records cannot be accessed unless the individual in question is under suspicion of a crime punishable by at least two years in prison, but the guy owed her a favor, and, furthermore, she could always refer to the rules of confidentiality governing international matters.

  The log files were in order of date: all the traffic that had traveled to and from the prepaid phone numbers in the last six months. The last number called was the one Katz had told her about, his conversation with the little boy named Linus; its closest base station was in Liljeholm.

  Accordingly, the only number that could be traced was Katz’s. The rest of them had only been called by other numbers on the list—not by traceable numbers or from contract phones where the owner could be identified. A closed circle, she thought: communication between corresponding vessels.

  Traffic between the numbers increased at regular intervals—it happened about once a month, as if there were some important event.

  She emailed the files to Katz with no comment of her own and logged into the Kobra intranet, through which she had access to the internal police databases. She entered the name he’d asked her to check: Peter Wallin.

  The results were slim. There was just one note: the man had come up in a tax investigation during his time as manager of a now-defunct strip club called Wild Horses. According to the Companies Registration Office, he owned a video-rental service with an address at a P.O. box in Uppsala. He was twenty-nine years old. No known residential registration.

  Could it really be true, as Katz thought, that Ramón had been running a blackmail scheme?

  According to Katz’s theory, Ramón’s girlfriend had sold herself to a sex network organized by Wallin. She had participated in films where she was sexually degraded and somehow or other came across Wallin’s address book, which conta
ined a list of his clients’ phone numbers. And she had potentially extorted money from the clients, which they then invested in drugs.

  If it was true, as Katz maintained, then perhaps Ramón hadn’t died of an accidental overdose after all; he may in fact have been murdered by the people he was blackmailing.

  And what about his girlfriend . . . what had happened to her?

  She sighed audibly. She didn’t know why she was doing this. It was all too far-fetched.

  She spent the next hour on her own business instead. She had received more emails from the financial police in Sarajevo. One of them contained a general question about whether there was corruption in the police authority in Sweden. Another contained data on transactions between suspicious accounts at Swedish business banks and less scrupulous ones in Luxembourg. A third contained a list of possible front men whom her Bosnian colleagues couldn’t investigate because the people in question were outside their jurisdiction. There were about ten names, and their lowest common denominator was that they all had origins in the former Yugoslavia.

  She ran them through the crime database but wasn’t any the wiser for it. Some of them had been sentenced, but never in connection with running fronts. Others had a clean record but had been involved with companies that were under suspicion of running fronts . . . But that had taken place so long ago that they could not possibly still be of interest.

  According to the information she found, three of the people on the list were the owners of relatively recently opened companies, but two of them actually seemed to be legitimate businesses and the third, whose type of enterprise wasn’t listed, had only existed for a few months before being liquidated.

  She realized that she was losing focus. She thought of the previous day instead, her aborted sex date. She had sobered up and told the man she’d changed her mind. Nothing strange there—it was all on a voluntary basis, of course. And yet, for an instant, she had been terror-stricken. She wondered if this was the way prostitutes felt when they were driven around to visit strange men in the middle of the night.